Therein lies the Catch-22: New drivers are more likely to get into trouble because they lack experience, but the best way to reduce the risk of a crash is to become an experienced driver. Dr. Alderman, an adolescent medicine specialist at Montefiore Medical Center, suggested in an interview that even after a teenager is licensed to drive independently, wise parents can mitigate risks by continuing to supervise driving in a variety of venues until teen drivers are more experienced.
Actually, the parents’ role in rearing safe drivers starts long before children can see over the steering wheel. “Parents need to be role models,” Dr. Alderman said. “Always fasten seatbelts, never text while driving, and never drink alcohol or smoke weed and then get behind the wheel.” To which I would add, parents should model safe driving habits by not speeding, tailgating or cutting in and out of traffic.
These days the most common risk facing young drivers involves distracting devices. A mere four seconds with eyes off the road vastly increases the chance of an accident. Using camcorders, the Teen Safe Driver Program revealed that three-fourths of moderate-to-severe rear-end crashes among teen drivers involved distracting behaviors, most often the use of cellphones. The teenage driver showed no response to the impending crash in half of cases in which the driver was using a phone.
“Teenage drivers have the highest rate of distraction-related fatal crashes of all other age groups,” Dr. Simons-Morton reported. And the temptations keep growing, with in-vehicle information and entertainment technologies and portable electronic devices of which teens are usually the earliest adopters.
“There are three kinds of distractions: visual, cognitive and manual,” Dr. Johnston said. “Electronic technology is all three of these, and the risk of a crash goes way up.”
Although alcohol as a factor in teen driving fatalities has declined in recent decades, “the use of alcohol by an adolescent driver remains a serious risk factor for motor vehicle crashes and resultant fatalities,” the pediatrics report states. In 2015, 16 percent of teenage drivers involved in fatal crashes had a blood alcohol level of 0.08 percent or higher, and 64 percent who were killed in alcohol-involved crashes were not wearing seatbelts.
All states now have a “zero-tolerance” law stating that a blood alcohol level of 0.02 percent or more for young drivers constitutes drunken driving and can result in an automatic suspension or loss of their license.
Source : Nytimes
